Tremors Week : Tremors 4: The Legend Begins

Welcome back buckaroos to further adventures of Graboids and their prey…which is just about anything that cannot run fast enough or stop making sound.  Well today we throw off the shackles of what we know about this creatures and how to track them.  In fact, let’s get rid of all those technological marvels that would aid in capture and elimination and go back to a simpler time in Americana.  Say about 1889 when Perfection Valley went under a different name of Rejection.   So grab your ten gallon hat, your six-shooter and do your level best to blast a critter.   This is Tremors 4: The Legend Begins.

 

Mmm Mexican. My favorite!

Black Hand Kelly: I’ll tell ya one thing, I ain’t got your book-learnin’, but I do know this: being full-growed don’t make ya a spoiler.

The founding members of Rejection Valley are more or less dependent on the silver mine residing near the valley.   Deep in the mines a hot spring erupts and causes a series of eggs to hatch and the mine becomes a death trap for anyone that sets foot in it.  Christine Lord (Sara Botsford of E.N.G., As the World Turns and The Arrow) runs the local tavern and hotel. Pyong Lien Chang (Ming Lo of Jarhead, Million Dollar Baby and The Pursuit of Happyness) and his wife Lu Wan (Lydia Look of The Proud Family, 10,000 Days and Battle of the Damned) run the local grocery and feed store.

Alright, which one of you had beans yet again?!

Burt Gummer’s ancestor Hiram Gummer (Michael Gross of Family Ties, With a Vengeance, Tremors, Avalanche, Tremors II: Aftershocks, Ground Control and Batman Beyond: The Movie) is the exact opposite of his descendant in that he is a well-mannered, lofty businessman from the East with no experience with firearms or any real physical activity at all.  This man is at best a dandy and demands to know why his silver mine is not being productive. One of the miners Juan Pedilla (Brent Roam of Deep Blue Sea, Desert Saints, Toolbox Murders and Patients) speaks out on what the town has agreed as sensationalist hooey.   That the mine is infested with desert dragons as they call them and Hiram will have not of this.   Hiram mounts up a few miners with guns and they proceed out to the valley in the hopes of putting an end to this nonsense.  Low and behold creatures spring out from the ground and proceed to devour the miners. 

With only Juan and Hiram to make it back alive the town believes the only way to end this nightmare is hiring a lethal and professional gunfighter the name of Black Hand Kelly (Billy Drago of The Adventures of Brisco County Jr., Charmed, Revamped, Demon Hunter, The Hills Have Eyes and Revamped) in the hopes that the crisis will be averted.

Blast that crazed howler monkey offscreen!!

And now I have just a bit of information of the film, with being shot in 35mm Dolby Digital, a bit of crane work and mostly dolly, the fine folks of K.N.B. EFX Group (Day of the Dead, Evil Dead II, From Dusk til Dawn, Phantasm II, Bride of the Re-Animator) and miniatures effects 4-Ward Productions (Tremors, Darkman, Batman Returns, Captain Ron, Dracula and Planet of the Apes) work side by side to create the hybrids of scale model and forced perspective as well as full scale prosthetic creatures. 

I, myself am not the biggest fan of prequels but I do understand that they wanted to tap into a formula with the series to renew it and make it fresh.  All in all I thought the production came out well but yes I also found it a bit more hammy than Brian Adams love songs.